Rite of Passage

From:
WRIGHT, EDDIE
Mar 25, 2018 at 7:37 AM
This weekend the first national March For Our Lives took place, and my mother, Jean Wright was present with Nia, my 13 year old daughter.
I wasn’t surprised, receiving the early morning message that read, “We’re headed to NYC to March for our lives!!”
It’s like a sacred rite of passage in my mothers mind.

I can still hear my mom’s voice yelling above the crowds of thousands, when I was five years old, protesting nuclear weapons, “1,2,3,4 we don’t want a Nuclear war!!”

My sister Mimi and I would shout right along, with flowers and peace signs painted on our faces, with puffed out afro’s like lost members of the Jackson five.

There still hasn’t been a nuclear war, yet more nations now have and are fighting for nuclear arms, which stirred a few questions in my mind. Why is it that our government is so against allowing every nation to have nuclear weapons for their own protection? Isn’t it their right as a free country?

When our government makes the argument of limiting the countries that have access to nuclear weapons, as a way to insure the greater peace for the world, why don’t we make that same argument when it comes to guns here at home?

AR-15’s, bump stocks and all other automatic rifles are like individual nuclear weapons that have proven to cause mass destruction at our schools and movie theaters.

I know I recently made a post on banning automatic weapons. To me that’s a first step that makes sense.
It also makes sense that if you insist on having a gun in the house for protection, it should be one shot gun.
If you want to have a bunch of hunting rifles and hand guns, we should keep them stored at your local police station, where you have access to check them out for your hunting trip.

There’s a lot of sensible steps that we could take to limit the gun violence in America. Our current governmental representatives, republicans and democrats alike, haven’t done anything but talk a good one for the political spot light.

There are free democratic countries that have almost no gun violence. America appears not to care about the well being of their citizens like those countries do.

The younger generation is the foundation of the March for our lives movement. Unfortunately, it appears that it’s going to take until that younger generation gets old enough to have the political power to demand a radical change.

Until then, we’ll have to continuously re-set the clock in expectation of the next mass shooting.

I don’t want this to be a doom and gloom post. I’m inspired seeing the marches on the news, knowing that the seed of hope and change is being planted by my mother in her granddaughters mind. She’ll grow up knowing she too has the power to make a difference.

Although Nia’s generation would more likely take to the internet to insure their voices are heard around the world.
My mother is teaching her a lesson to march a peaceful protest, taking it to the grass roots that gave us the freedoms and liberties we often overlook today.